[During the opening sequence.]
Tonight: James drives a car that you can hand on to your grandchildren; I engage reheat in a hot Saab; And Richard almost drowns!
“November 9th, 2003” · Season 3, Episode 3
In this episode: Jeremy Clarkson (12), Richard Hammond (4), James May (4)
[on the Bentley Continental GT]
There's no way the aristocracy is going to buy this car. I mean, these days they have to burn their children just to stay warm, and all their furniture's held together by the moths that ate it.
[...]
It's like doing 5000 miles an hour in Douglas Bader's sponge bag.
[criticising the armrests]
They are completely pointless. Speaking of which: this button here allows you to adjust the hardness of the suspension, like so. Why do you need that? Why would you want to make your Bentley more uncomfortable? It really is as useful as a snooze button on a smoke alarm.
[...]
The old four-door Arnage is a symphony of pomp and circumstance, hope and glory - absolute power corrupting absolutely. Oh, it isn't very good, but there's such a sense of occasion when you drive it. This is the other way round: brilliant, sensationally fast, handles beautifully, and it'll almost certainly be reliable. But it leaves you feeling... just a little bit cold.
[after pausing the playback of his escape-from-a-sinking-car film]
And we'll find out later if I die.
[on the Jaguar R-D6 concept car]
But the bit I really like is the inside. Have a look at this. Now have a look at that black leather and all those shiny bits, and those red lights down in the footwell. Now clearly a Jaguar designer got completely lashed at a vodka bar and thought, [in drunken voice] "Uhh, I'll make it look like thish then." So obviously there'll be a bouncer on the door, telling you you can't come in 'cause you've got trainers on.
It's a gorgeous-looking thing, I think it's fab. But here's the thing I don't get about Jaguar concept cars. Two years ago, about then, they showed us XK180, and there it is, that was to show us what Jaguars of the future will look like. But then last year, they did the R Coupé, to show us what Jaguars of the future will look like. And now they're back again with this, to show us what Jaguars of the future will look like.
Now look, Jaguar. You have made your point. Just make the car.
[interviewing Rob Brydon]
You have had the most wretched car history of anyone I've ever, ever met. We start off, where were we, radio DJ...
RRob
[DJ voice] BBC Radio Wales. Good morning!
You bought yourself a Volkswagen Polo.
RRob
Brand new.
Brand new! Things going well. Your next car... is a third-hand Vauxhall Carlton. What in God's name possessed you to do that?
RRob
You know, my dad came across it, you know, it was reasonably priced... it was a big, brown Vauxhall Carlton -
Brown!
RRob
Wait, let me finish. It was a big brown Vauxhall Carlton, the inside was a kind of creamy sort of biscuit colour, it was velour, the seats. It was a nice car, it got me from A to B, that was not the worst of my cars.
What, you're trying to say the green Sierra you had was -
RRob
That was the worst, yes.
What possessed you to do that?
RRob
Um, my dad came across it, you know, it was a good price...
Did you branch out on your own for the 1992 Ford Escort?
RRob
Now! The 1992 Ford Escort, I thought, and I don't know anything about cars -
That's obvious.
RRob
- was quite a sexy little car. I quite liked it, actually.
Have you ever actually watched Top Gear? 'Cause you might...
RRob
I've never seen a whole one, no. [Jeremy looks dismayed, audience applauds] It clashes with Heartbeat, OK, which goes against you.
I know! But I do make a special effort to watch Marion and Geoff. You should try to watch one all the way through. Because after the Escort... you're not going to believe this, ladies and gentlemen...
RRob
Oh, I know what you're going to say now, yeah. OK.
... a Mitsubishi Carisma. Why on Earth did you buy one of those?
RRob
Well, my dad came across it... [audience laughs]
Anyone who sits in the back of a four-seater convertible looks like Hitler.
The British toff: though rare and endangered, they are easy to identify. They are most readily spotted in the countryside, because they own it. Distinguishing features include their clothing, which used to belong to their parents, and their characteristic mating call of "Harrumph."
[on the Subaru Legacy Outback]
I almost forgot to tell you what it's like to drive. Well, I quite like it, actually. It's relaxing and it's... unstressful.
This whole survey throws up some fascinating stuff. Like the Porsche 911. A favorite car of mine, known for its... somewhat scary handling sometimes. Ninety-six percent of 911 owners in this survey claim to be absolutely satisfied with their car's handling, which is very good. It leaves four percent, and they probably were entirely satisfied with the handling of their 911 right up until they hit the tree. Then they changed their mind.
Yeah, but think of it this way. The people who got their bone marrow and their eyes are very satisfied with the handling of the 911.
What do you drive, sir?
AMAudience member
A 355.
A Ferrari. There's an interesting statistic on Ferrari, ah... what is it, James?
[consulting clipboard] Um, 90% of people who said they had a Ferrari were lying.
[after Richard's sinking-car film, in which he needed the rescue diver's help to escape the car]
So did you die in the making of that film?
Well, yeah. I mean, if it was real, yes, I did.
And the thing is, it was very lucky you were in the GL model, 'cause that was the one that did come with the diver in the back seat with the aqualung.
Yeah. If it'd been an L, pfft. That would've been it, curtains.
[on people carriers]
Obviously all of them are uncool. If you buy a people - anyone got one? You have. Basically what you're saying about yourself, sir, is: you've had your children and now you're just waiting to die.
All dentists have Saabs, OK? All. And graphic designers all have them, and all architects have them, and all Stephen Frys have them.
[on the Saab "night panel" function]
That's handy if you want to line up for a bombing run on a Soviet nuclear submarine base, but of limited use on the A38 just outside Burton-on-Trent.
Now what I'd like to do at this point to demonstrate the difference between car and plane even more is bolt the Stig into the Saab here and have him race a fighter jet round our track. [laughing] Only trouble is, can you imagine ringing up the Royal Navy and saying, "Hello, I'm from that pokey motoring programme on BBC, would it be possible to borrow one of your Sea Harriers?" You can imagine what the response would be.
[cut to a shot of a Sea Harrier taxiing into position next to the Stig-driven Saab at the start/finish line of the test track]
[voiceover] Yes, they were there in a jiffy.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Top Gear pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.